


Early Mornings, Late Affections.

by StarlingGirl



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Vague background fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot can change in a year.</p>
<p>This is a year of Clint Barton waking up next to Tony Stark, drunkenly and soberly and deliberately and unexpectedly. This is a year of early mornings and late ones, of a relationship seen through those moments after waking.</p>
<p>It's also a year of entirely too much interaction before the first caffeine hit of the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Early Mornings, Late Affections.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wasagi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wasagi/gifts).



> For tonyandhisbots on tumblr. I broke her with bad feels and decided to produce some good ones. It was going to be a drabble. It... got away from me, yeah.
> 
> Not beta'd, so any mistakes are my own.

January 1st  


Eyes still closed, Clint’s tongue swipes across teeth that manage to feel furry and gritty at the same time, probes at the taste of a hangover that hasn’t quite arrived yet; licks lips that are dry and still kiss swollen. There’s an arm slung across his chest, hot and heavy.

It’s not the first time he’s fallen into bed with Tony, but it’s the first time he’s stayed.

He’s well practised in easing himself from slumbering embraces, at slipping from beds and leaving nothing but a rapidly cooling memory of the heat of his skin, but for whatever reason – because he’s warm or because he wants to sleep off his hangover or because he thinks it must be lonely, being Tony – he stays.

Later, Tony wakes and stares at him blearily, then buries his face in his neck and falls asleep once more. It’s a hard reaction to gauge anything from.

When he wakes again, Clint is gone.

January 2nd  


Twice a week isn’t unusual, but two nights in a row is; Clint wakes and this time doesn’t hesitate in gently wiggling himself from Tony’s sleeping clutches. He sits at the edge of the bed, wraps his fingers around his wrist and wonders at their aching before he spots Tony’s tie still knotted to the headboard.

Smiling a little, but shaking his head all the same, he unties it before he stumbles as quietly as he can around the room, collecting clothes and pulling them on with less-than-usual coordination.

He doesn’t realise he still has the tie wrapped around his hand until he’s out of the door; by then it seems stupid to sneak back in just to return it. He’ll give it back tomorrow, he thinks, and tosses it over his chest of drawers when he returns to his room.

January 26th  


When he wakes it’s with fingers pressing brand new bruises into his arm, and his reaction is to push himself up and over, to box in whoever’s attacking him under muscled thighs and strong arms and –

– and Tony looks up at him with wide, scared eyes, breath dancing from his lips skittishly, chest heaving, and all the touches of a nightmare lingering like the sweat on his skin. Clint relaxes his muscles and doesn’t hesitate to duck his head to Tony’s neck, press his lips against the pulse that thunders under burning skin.

He doesn’t speak. He’s never been good at speaking, at finding the words that someone needs; Coulson had the knack, had time and time again put the right sentence in the right place to let Clint cry, to absolve his guilt, to build him up or break him down as needed. Clint had tried to imitate him, tried to learn from the man – but he’d never been a good student, and his teacher had been stolen from him all too soon.

So he replaces words with kisses, licks the salt from Tony’s skin, brings gentle fingers to the side of his face and into his hair as he kisses each of his eyelids softly, tries to steal away the nightmares from behind them.

Tony wraps his fingers around Clint’s wrists, and Clint lets him cling on as though trying to save himself from drowning.

Eventually, when Tony’s heart has beat itself back into a steady rhythm, Clint slides off the man but doesn’t go far. He presses himself close to Tony’s side, face buried in his neck and breath playing across his collar bone. It’s a reversal of how they usually wake, and when after long minutes Tony turns so that they are chest-to-chest, Clint doesn’t protest.

He doesn’t leave, either, until the sun is high in the sky and Tony bears the look of a man who doesn’t want to talk about it.

January 27th  


They didn’t have sex.

Clint waited outside Tony’s door until he shuffled up from the workshop at some godforsaken hour, met Tony’s curious gaze with an unreadable one of his own, then followed Tony in and slipped into bed with him silently.

Neither spoke as Clint pressed his chest against Tony’s back, and laid a careful kiss to his shoulder.

They woke like that, hours later, and with another kiss to that same spot Clint slipped away, leaving Tony to fall back into the arms of sleep.

February 16th  


“Where do you think you’re going, Barton?”

“Go back to sleep, Stark.”

“It’s hard to sleep over the sound of your walk of shame.”

“It’s gotta happen sometime.”

“So let it happen later.”

“You’re just secretly a cuddler.”

“Guilty as charged. Humour me.”

March 2nd  


JARVIS wakes them both with bright light streaming through the windows and a cool assessment of the weather that pulls Clint from his slumber with a strangled noise of surprise and a thundering heart; Tony merely pulls a pillow over his head.

“What the hell, J?” Clint asks, and doesn’t even notice that he’s spent so much time around Tony that he’s picked up the nicknames he uses.

“Agent Fury is downstairs, Sir,” JARVIS replies, and Clint’s got an arm thrown over his face and is preparing some choice swearwords when the AI adds “with agent Coulson.”

There’s silence, and then Tony speaks.

“Cut it out, JARVIS,” he says, as his fingers creep around Clint’s bicep, holding him tightly as if scared he might run. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m certainly not laughing, Sir,” JARVIS replies coolly. “I have authenticated agent Coulson’s appearance, voice and movements from previous footage, and can find no inconsistencies other than some minor weight loss.”

Clint is shaking, eyes closed tight enough to send white spots dancing across the back of his eyelids, because he knows this is dream and soon enough it will turn into a nightmare; there’s been enough of them. At least when it devolves, it won’t seem so real, so painfully lifelike.

But the chance to see the face of the man who’s like a father to him one more time is too strong, even if he’s dreaming, and he scrambles out of bed and pulls on his sweatpants on the go before he’s out of the door, not even bothering with a shirt.

Behind him, Tony falls gracelessly from the bed as he tries to follow.

March 3rd  


Tony wakes to find Clint in his bed – not wrapped around him or pressed close, but curled at the end like a dog that has crept into his owner’s room during the night. His open eyes reflect faintly the glow of the arc reactor, and Tony doubts he has slept.

“I thought you’d be happy,” Tony says, sleep still jarring his thought processes, and when he hears Clint mutter something about betrayal, he thinks he understands. Clint’s life is full of people who have left him.

“Come here,” Tony mumbles, voice still husky and low from slumber, and holds out a hand. After a long hesitation Clint does, crawling up the bed and collapsing practically on top of Tony, face pressed to his chest. It can’t be comfortable for Clint and it sure as hell isn’t comfortable for Tony, but neither moves.

Tony doesn’t sleep while he waits for Clint to do just that, and very carefully doesn’t think about the heat against his skin that might be tears.

May 28th  


“Were you and Coulson ever -?”

The abortive question is a surprise to Clint. It’s not even half-past six in the morning, and Tony’s rarely coherent before ten at the earliest, especially without coffee. He doesn’t roll over to face the man, instead keeping his eyes fixed on the faint blue glow of the control panel by the door which, if he squints, could be another arc reactor in the half-darkness.

“No,” he says eventually. “It’s not like that.”

It’s practically impossible to explain, and Clint usually settles with ‘he’s like a father to me’, but that doesn’t quite cut it, not with the father that the universe thrust his way. Coulson was the first person in Clint’s life to really care about him, to have faith in him, the first person to be proud, the first to be disappointed rather than angry.

That answer seems to confuse Tony, and fingers that had started drawing a trailing pattern that felt an awful lot like an equation on his back pause in their journey over skin. Clint can sense the question coming, and is surprised (again) when it isn’t one.

“Two months is a long time.”

It takes him a moment to work out what Tony’s saying, and he thinks it must be _‘two months is a long time to not have you in my bed.’_

Fingers resume their exploration of broad curves of muscle, and Tony seems to content not to get an answer – which is good, because Clint doesn’t have one.

June 14th  


They have never had sex in the morning before, but the previous day had been too many close calls, and the rekindled heat between them after only a few hours’ sleep is the trailing ends of adrenaline, is the search for reassurance in the other’s safety, is the dragging of fingers over bruises and bandages and the catalogue of hurts and the absolution of sins.

Every part of Clint aches as he lowers himself onto Tony, breath catching at the comfortable burn that obscures for the moment the dull pain pervading his body that seems to stretch even to his teeth.

Tony’s fingers trail across the gauze that’s wrapped around Clint’s abdomen as Clint remains still for almost a whole ten seconds, eyes closed and breathing forced to a steady rhythm that – consciously or not – is in time with Tony’s. Then he pushes himself up a little, moves his hips in a small, dirty circle, and both of them take air in through their teeth at the same moment.

It’s like he’s broken a barrier, and suddenly everything is desperate and reckless. A hand wraps around his neck, pulls him down, and their lips meet fiercely before Tony’s mouth moves down the column of Clint’s throat, licking and kissing and _biting_ marks onto him that he won’t be able to hide no matter what he wears.

Fingers travel wildly across slick skin, and the sound of their hard breathing and breathless half-moans is oddly intimate in the silent room. A sharp line of pain blossoms across Clint’s abdomen and he feels the exquisite agony of stitches pulled; heat pools and there’s no doubt scarlet creeping across white but he doesn’t stop, merely steadies himself with hands on Tony’s chest and keeps going. It’s nothing special, as far as their coital activities go – it’s hard and fast and when the rough pads of Tony’s fingers close around his length, Clint comes jarringly with Tony following mere seconds after.

The ache settles back in almost immediately, accompanied by the stinging line across his stomach, and Tony is oddly tender as he helps Clint to the bathroom, cleaning sweat and come from his skin with warm water before peeling the gauze away and chewing his lip, uncertainly.

When he gently pulls clothes over Clint’s frame he doesn’t resist, and though he ought to feel some shame at being _carried_ down in the elevator, he merely clings to Tony’s neck and buries his face in his chest and struggles with the lingering guilt over the fact that Tony’s only slightly less beat up than he is.

He leaves Clint on a couch and reappears with Natasha (not Bruce, and Clint’s kind of grateful, because Natasha won’t speak as she stitches him like she’s done so many times before, only this time with legitimate medical supplies rather than a sterilised needle and dental floss) and stands by and worries at the skin around his thumb with his teeth.

He falls asleep there, on the couch, and when he wakes Tony is asleep too, sat on the floor with his fingers tangled in Clint’s.

June 29th  


They wake up and once more they start the day with kisses, and this time nothing is rough or hard or fast and if Clint knew any better, he’d realise that they’d made love.

July 8th

Clint wakes up with his limbs tangled in Tony’s and doesn’t question it, but there’s a nagging sensation in his mind that something about this is off. It’s not until he opens his eyes that he realises this is not Tony’s bed, but his – recalls suddenly that there’d been a forlorn tapping on his door last night and when he’d slouched from bed to answer it he’d found Tony, drunk and pathetic and mumbling something about Clint not being like Pepper.

At the time Clint hadn’t bothered listening, had simply left the door open and climbed back into bed and moments later Tony had shed his clothes and joined him, pressing close with the smell of whiskey on his breath.

The more he thinks about it now, the more he realises that Tony was probably being an asshole. _You’re not like Pepper,_ he’d said, and all Clint can take from that is he’s nothing like the person that Tony’s longest functioning relationship has been with.

He slips out of bed and then remembers that it’s _his fucking bed_ and he ought to make Tony leave. But really, that would involve waking him, and the whole point of the running away thing is to _avoid_ confrontation. So he pulls a crumpled t-shirt from a chair and pulls it over his head, and pads out of his own Goddamn room.

When he returns, Tony’s gone. So’s the tie he’s been meaning to give back for months now.

July 24th  


“I thought we’d moved past the running away stage, Barton.”

“I have to go.”

“You talk such shit. You don’t have to go anywhere. What is with you lately?”

“What?”

“You’ve been avoiding me. And when I finally get you drunk enough to fall into bed with me like good old times, you try and sneak away before my hangover’s even had a chance to set in.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit you don’t.”

“I guess Pepper always stayed in the mornings then, did she? Whatever. Go back to sleep.”

“What the hell does that -”

“I’m out.”

August 1st  


Clint wakes up knowing that someone’s in the room and he’s fully alert and upright in less than a second; Tony, leaning against his door, looks startled for a moment, and then schools his expression back into neutral.

“What the hell, Stark?” Clint asks, and his thundering heart and accelerated breath aren’t reflected in the firm tone of his voice only because he’s had years of practice hiding them.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Tony says, and unfolds his arms, pushing himself off away from the door and taking a few steps closer. “And every time anyone mentions Pepper, you look like you’ve just taken a mouthful of cheap vodka.”

Clint falls back against his pillow, hands covering his face, and hopes that Tony will just go away. He doesn’t.

“Clint,” he says, firmly with a note of pleading, and for some reason it sounds strange to hear his first name from Tony’s lips when he’s so used to Barton, Hawkeye, Legolas, Katniss, the endless list of childish nicknames and over-the-top endearments that Tony throws at him.

“Fuck off,” he says, because he just woke up and he’d even dared to think that today might be kind of nice.

“No,” is the answer he gets, and then Tony swings a leg across him and catches his wrists and presses them above his head, and now is a really bad time for Clint’s dick to be taking an interest in proceedings because this is an _argument_ damn it.

Tony must know that Clint’s only still restrained by his grip because he hasn’t yet decided not to be, but his eyes are deadly serious as he narrows them slightly and digs his fingers a little harder into Clint’s wrists.

“What is your problem?” he asks, each word enunciated slowly and clearly like he’s talking to a child. Clint tips his chin up defiantly and considers mute rebellion, but his tongue betrays him by allowing words he hasn’t had time to consider to trip off his tongue.

“You told me I wasn’t like Pepper, asshole.” There’s a brief silence and if Clint wasn’t busy cursing himself in his mind, he’d relish the look of confusion on Tony’s face, because Tony Stark doesn’t often look openly lost.

“And this is a bad thing because? What, you want to wear louboutins and sleep with Happy?”

Another silence, and Tony’s grip on Clint’s wrists eases a little.

“You told me that I wasn’t like the one woman you ever settled down for,” Clint mutters, eyes fixed on the steady glow of the arc reactor beneath Tony’s shirt, because anything is better than looking him in the eye. “You told me I wasn’t like the only person you ever loved, the one person who stuck with you through thick and thin, who saved you over and over, who -”

He flinches as Tony’s lips brush his temple, accompanied by the rough scratch of beard.

“I told you,” Tony says, steadily, “that you weren’t like the woman I stayed with because I felt I ought to, rather than because I wanted to.”

There’s a beat of breathless, terrifying anticipation that stretches into what feels like next week, and then it snaps. Clint’s not sure who initiates the kiss, and he doesn’t care. He presses his body against Tony’s and lets him lick his doubts from behind his teeth.

August 2nd  


He wakes in Tony’s bed, and doesn’t leave until it until Tony does.

August 3rd  


And again.

August 4th  


And _again._

August 26th  


Clint wakes up alone, and panics. He’s left Tony alone in bed time and time and time again; even after he’d got out of the habit of sneaking off, he’s an early riser. But it’s never been the other way around, and unease curls around his heart.

He swings his legs out of bed, only for JARVIS to inform him that Tony is approaching the room now; when he opens the door Tony – dressed and smelling like the machine oil and coffee that means he’s probably been in his workshop – is quick to toe off his shoes and pull Clint back down onto the bed.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, “I’m working on the – well, nothing that will interest you.”

“Why are you sorry?” asks Clint, genuinely confused. Tony laughs and kisses his nose, a gesture so casually affectionate that Clint feels an almost-ache take up residence behind his ribs.

“I like to see you in the mornings,” he says, which doesn’t answer Clint’s question at all.

September 15th  


Clint wakes and stares at the ceiling, and mentally notes that it’s raining, like it has on his birthday for eighteen years now. Tony’s still sleeping but Clint can’t stay still; he slips from the bed and grabs some clothes from the accumulated stack of his things in Tony’s closet and hits the tarmac.

Running feels good, and the rain on his skin feels like it has every other year: like it’s letting him start again. _This time_ , he thinks – as he has done every other time – _this time, I’ll do something right. This year, the world will be good to me._

When he returns, out of breath and soaked through, Tony’s awake, and Clint thinks that maybe this _is_ the year that the rain has made everything new and better, because Tony remembers it’s his birthday and licks the rain from his skin and murmurs the gentlest of words in his ear as Clint’s cold skin steals heat from his.

September 19th  


They’re woken by JARVIS informing them of a full scale attack on SHIELD HQ; they scramble out of bed and Tony sprints out the door for his suit and Clint sprints the opposite way for his and they meet again in the middle and there’s one anxious, brief kiss with Tony’s fingers fisted too-tight in Clint’s hair and the metal of the suit uncomfortably hard against him before Tony’s visor slams down.

Every time it happens, they kiss like it’s the last time, in case it is.

September 29th  


Tony wakes as Clint is pulling a faded t-shirt over his head, and mumbles something in pre-coffee Tony-speak that might conceivably be ‘come back to bed’.

“Can’t,” Clint says, with no small measure of regret. “Said I’d hit the ring with Natasha. I’m getting rusty, and there’s nothing like getting your ass beaten to the floor repeatedly by her to knock some of that rust off.”

Tony lifts his head so that Clint can see his look of utter disapproval, and then tilts his head a little.

“Barton, is that my shirt?” Clint looks down and tugs on the faded fabric.

“My room seems far away,” he says, apologetically. Tony doesn’t bother looking offended, and falls back onto his pillow, already rolling over and starting to settle comfortably back into the arms of sleep.

“So move your stuff here,” he grumbles. “Alternatively: keep wearing my stuff. It’s sexy.”

He’s not really awake, so Clint ignores it.

October 12th  


They wake together, unusually early for Tony, and stumble laughing into the shower. Afterwards, Clint uses Tony’s deodorant and steals another shirt; Tony grins like the cat that got the cream but still asks why the hell Clint hasn’t just brought a load of stuff over yet.

“Because then I might never leave,” he says, mock-solemnly. “And then what would you do?”

Tony pulls him closer with his fingers fisted in the material of the t-shirt and smiles into Clint’s lips.

“I think I’d kinda like it,” he says.

If Clint is surprised, he doesn’t let it show.

October 19th  


“If you are getting out of bed, Barton, I’ll get JARVIS to put the room on lockdown.”

“Relax. I need to pee. You know, if that’s okay with you and your one-man bedroom tyranny.”

“...I suppose I could allow it.”

October 31st  


“What, no themed wake-up call?” Tony grumbles, as JARVIS gradually allows the sunlight to filter through the windows at Clint’s request, and Clint pushes coffee into Tony’s unresisting hands.

“What, did you want me to put a sheet over my head and scare you half to death?” he asks, settling against the headboard and wrapping an arm around Tony without a second thought when he pushes himself against Clint’s side.

“Take more than that to scare me,” Tony snorts, as he breathes in the aroma of coffee like it’ll save his life. “Bet you can’t manage it.”

“Tony,” Clint says seriously. “I’m pregnant.”

Tony pauses.

“That _is_ terrifying,” he agrees, and their laughter mingles together in that familiar rush of amusement and affection that still never fails to leave a little ball of happiness high in Clint’s chest. He’s sure, if he could see it, it would be like his own little arc reactor, keeping him steady.

December 5th  


Clint wakes up and _knows_ that it’s snowing; knows with the certainty of a child who can taste the tinny cold and the adventures it will bring. He slips out of the warmth of the bed and wanders to the window, quietly asks JARVIS to allow a little light through the glass – enough that he can see the dancing flakes but not enough to wake Tony.

JARVIS complies without comment, and Clint presses his forehead to the cool glass and watches snow get lost in the New York skyline. It won’t stick around, the snow, but it will keep on falling.

_Now it really feels like Christmas,_ he remembers Coulson saying a few years ago when snow had started to drift from the sky, and he searches inside himself for that festive feeling that ought to be lurking somewhere. As ever, it evades him.

When Tony wakes, eventually, Clint still has his face pressed against the window and Tony ambles over, JARVIS letting the dark tint of the windows lighten until the whole city is clear before them. Tony slides his arms around Clint’s waist and rests his chin on his shoulder.

And there, just there in that moment, is a little spark of something that Clint thinks maybe is Christmas. But in reaching for it, he’s scared it away, and it slips through his grasp.

Still, it’s him and Tony and the peace of snow in the morning, and he can’t bring himself to mind all that much.

December 18th  


Clint wakes to Tony shifting next to him. It’s early still, and even beyond the blacked-out windows it’ll still be dark.

Tony doesn’t seem to be sleeping well, and Clint hates that he can’t tell why.

Tony makes as though to leave the bed but Clint lures him back with kisses and mumbled complaints, and holds him there with strong arms until Tony gives up with a huff of not-quite-laughter and lies with his head on Clint’s chest.

December  19th  


“Is that tinsel, Barton?” Clint jumps. He’d been so intent on what he was doing that he hadn’t even heard Tony stir; he turns with a piece of tinsel clutched in his hand that’s clutched in turn to his thundering heart.

“Christ, Tony. You scared me.” He glances down at the red and gold tinsel in his hand (no, that hadn’t been an accident) and smiles. “Yeah. I thought it’d be a nice surprise, for when you woke. Since you’ve decorated the corporate levels and the common areas but not here, and…”

He trails off. Tony looks vaguely nauseous. Clint doesn’t know why and for the moment he doesn’t care, because he’s too preoccupied by the fact that he might have upset Tony.

“Was that wrong?” he asks, quietly. “I can take it down, if you like.”

Tony’s face stays stricken for a moment longer, and then hardens to a resolute resolve.

“You like Christmas, don’t you?” he asks Clint, and Clint wanders over and sits himself cross-legged on the end of the bed, facing him.

“I want to like it,” he says gently, and with an honesty that surprises even himself. “Everyone talks about this feeling that’s Christmas. I just… I want to find that. And everyone says it’s in different things and I’ve tried them all but -” he breaks off, uncomfortable.

Tony leans forward, and stretches out a hand, and runs his fingers across Clint’s cheekbone.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll help,” and he grabs the tinsel from Clint’s hand as he crawls out of bed.

December 24th  


“Happy Christmas Eve,” Tony murmurs into Clint’s neck, and Clint returns the sentiment with a kiss to the top of Tony’s head and fingers tangled in between his. “Feeling it yet?” Tony asks, and Clint is tempted to lie and say yes, because he wants nothing more than for Tony to be happy. But in the end, he can’t bring himself to do it.

“Not yet,” he murmurs.

It’s Christmas Eve. It’s also a Thursday, and to be honest the latter still seems the more relevant.

“My old man died over Christmas,” Tony says, suddenly. “We argued, and I left the house, told him I wasn’t coming back. Last thing I said to him.”

Clint suddenly feels a horribly heavy weight of guilt settle over him and he starts to murmur fevered apologies, bringing Tony’s fingers to his lips and kissing them in between his words, until Tony uses those same fingers to cover Clint’s mouth.

“We can’t mourn forever,” he says, decisively.

Clint doesn’t understand, because he knows that Tony didn’t get on with his father, and he himself had never mourned his own father for a second. But he’s _aware_ that he doesn’t understand and that he never will, and perhaps that is enough.

They kiss, then, all slow, tender touches and the barest parting of lips and the lazy, comfortable knowledge that they don’t have to have sex for this to mean something.

December 25th  


Clint wakes to a strange glow and he can’t for the life of him figure out what it is; he blinks a few times and reaches out and finds only an empty space where Tony should be. Sitting, he stares at the sight that meets him and closes his eyes, rubbing them before opening them once more.

There is still a Christmas tree in the corner of the room that had not been there before, and it is string with fairy lights that cast an eerie yet peaceful luminescence over the room. He wonders how he slept through its arrival.

It is not like the trees in the rest of the Tower, which were decorated by professionals and perfectly colour co-ordinated; this is haphazard and strung with popcorn-strings and mismatched baubles that look like they might have been stolen from the other trees, at the back where no one will miss them.

Underneath is a small stack of presents, wrapped like a truck ran over them. Tony is nowhere to be seen.

Clint slips out of bed, pads on tip-toes towards the tree, glancing at the clock as he does so – the display reads 4:13am. Casting a glance around the room – as though someone might step out of the shadows and demand he leave the tree and the presents alone – he sinks to the floor and runs his fingers over the wrapping of the nearest present, peeks inside the card.

_Clint,_ it reads, _Merry Christmas. Don’t eat them all at once._

It’s signed with a squiggle that’s apparently Tony’s name, and although the message is simple, Clint suddenly feels overwhelmingly emotional, so battered by such an unexpected mixture of feelings that he’s practically drowning in them.

The noise of the door opening startles him, and he’s on his feet in an instant.

Tony grins at the vaguely guilty look on his face. He’s in pyjamas, and he’s carrying another two presents under his arms.

“Caught you,” he says. “Now _that’s_ Christmas, waking up while Santa’s still doing his thing and sneaking to the tree to look at your presents.” He walks over and deposits the final two, and Clint realises that all of these presents are for him. The tree is for him. The lights and the decorations are for him.

_Christmas_ is for him, because Tony doesn’t do Christmas.

There’s a sort of tingling anticipation in his gut and a warm feeling in his chest, and he knows instinctively that this is what people have been telling him about. This is the feeling he’s been chasing.

He starts to cry.

He can’t help it. He’s ashamed of his tears, bringing his hands to his face to hide them from Tony only to feel Tony’s fingers wrapping around his own and pulling them away. Tony kisses away his tears and Clint throws his arms around Tony’s neck and whispers ‘Merry Christmas’ so fiercely that it almost sounds dangerous.

They don’t go back to sleep. They bathe in Christmas.

December 29th  


“Tony?”

“Mmm?”

“Did you make the popcorn-strings yourself?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just checking.”

January 1st  


When Clint wakes, Tony’s beaten him to it, and is propped up on one elbow with a smile on his face. Clint might usually make a joke about how creepy it is to watch him sleep, but the look in Tony’s eyes stops him.

“What?” he asks, cautiously, and Tony answers by leaning over and pressing a kiss to his lips.

“Happy anniversary,” he whispers into Clint’s mouth, and Clint frowns.

“How’d you figure that one?” he asks, pulling back slightly to look Tony in the eye. Tony grins and runs a hand up Clint’s neck; the resulting shiver that passes down his spine is intoxicating.

“First time you stayed the night,” Tony said. “What, you think I’d forget?”

Clint stares.

“Are we dating?” he asks, stupidly. He feels slow, and not just because he only woke up a few seconds ago; for all this, he’s never stopped to think, and now his brain struggles to look at the past year in full. Tony looks unsure for a moment, uncertain.

“Well, never in so many words,” he advances cautiously, and Clint sees him starting to prepare escape routes and find the words to make this all a joke, and so he says the first thing that comes to mind.

“I love you.”

It’s Tony’s turn to stare, and Clint has to force himself to meet his gaze; from the corner of his eyes he sees the Christmas lights sparkling where he hasn’t been able to bear the thought of taking them down yet, and they’re distracting.

“I love you too,” Tony says eventually, like he’s only just realised it.

Clint runs a thumb over Tony’s bottom lip.

“Can we… do this?” he asks. “Properly? Forever?”

He’s not really sure what he’s asking, but it doesn’t matter because Tony’s answer is _yes,_ cut through with kisses and touches and _yes_ and _yes_ and a dozen times _yes._

“Happy New Year,” Clint breathes into Tony’s eager kisses, and earns himself a laugh.

“And to many more like it,” Tony replies.

It feels like Christmas again, but a little different, and it takes Clint the longest time to work out what it is, low in his belly, as Tony’s hands push away restrictive fabric and Clint’s hand smoothes over the swell of muscle and the friction between them causes Clint’s breath to catch, his head to fall back.

When he realises, he exhales shakily, and presses a tender kiss to the corner of Tony’s mouth.

Home, he realises. This feeling is home.


End file.
